Resum:

This doctoral dissertation is divided in three chapters. While all of them deal with the measurement and determinants of economic mobility and (in)equality of opportunity, each has a distinct topic and focuses on a special facet of the opportunity and mobility puzzle. One size doesn't t all: A quantile analysis of intergenerational income mobility in the U.S. (1980-2010) Conventional wisdom and previous literature suggest that economic mobility is lower at the tails of the income distribution; however, the few studies that have estimated intergenerational income elasticity (IGE) at di erent points of the distribution in the U.S. were limited by small samples, arrived at disparate results, and had not estimated the trend of elasticity over time. In the rst chapter of this dissertation a large sample of income observations in the 1980-2010 period for the U.S. is built using the PSID database, which allows us to obtain robust quantile estimates of the IGE both for the pooled sample and for each wave. For the pooled sample, the IGE shows a U-shaped relation with the income distribution, with higher values at the tails (0.64 at the tenth percentile and 0.48 at the ninety- fth percentile) and a minimum value {highest mobility- of 0.38 at the seventieth percentile. The trend evolution of the IGE also varies across the income distribution: at the lower and mid quantiles, income mobility increased during the 80s and 90s but declined in the 00s, while for the higher quantiles it remained relatively stable along the whole period. Finally, the impact of education and race on mobility is evaluated. Both factors are found to be important and related to the position at the income distribution...